Climate Change Consideration in Planning and Development of Semi-Urban Area

Abstract

The present scenario clearly indicates that urbanization is taking place in a fast rate. Due to the rapid increase in population and constraint in the temporal space, urbanization has become an ideal choice for satisfying the needs of the growing population. The present trend shows that there are a lot of chances for the semi-urban area to be urbanized in the near future. Urbanization has lot of advantages and disadvantages too. Urbanization leads to lot of problems in drainage, water distribution system, sediment transport, etc. Urbanization has lot of impacts on climate, one of which is greenhouse gas emission. Urbanization leads to climate change, and climate change in turn increases the risk of environmental hazards like floods, hurricanes, cyclones, etc. To tackle the problem, proper planning and development should be made to avoid and mitigate the effects of climate change on urbanization of semi-urban area. The design of hydrological systems like city drain, water distribution system, etc. needs to be done considering future development due to urbanization. In this study, climate change study for Bokakhat Township, a semi-urban area, has been carried out. The precipitation and number of dry days have been forecasted using statistical downscaling of climatic variable obtained from large-scale global climate model (GCM). NCEP reanalysis data have been used to model the precipitation, and the model for dry days has been created by comparing two GCMs, without using NCEP reanalysis data. The downscaling has been carried out using CGCM3 and HadCM3 models with A2 scenario. HadCM3 model has been chosen for precipitation and CGCM3 model for number of dry days. The results obtained from downscaling have been used to predict the rainfall intensity in the future. The result shows 27% increase in the average annual precipitation and 31% increase in the average rainfall intensity.